Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder Stephen Richer deleted his X account Thursday with hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted.
The county’s slow reporting of election results has raised concerns — particularly among supporters of GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake who is in a very tight race with Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego — that the delay is allowing room for foul play.
Lake was tied with or had taken a slight lead over Gallego in multiple polls going into Tuesday’s election, though Gallego still had a 2.6 advantage in the Real Clear Politics average of polls going back into late October.
However, the RCP average only had Republican Donald Trump ahead in the state by 3 percent, but he currently has a 6.1 percent lead over Democrat Kamala Harris in the actual results.
So the average of surveys underrepresented Trump’s support by around 3 percent. If the same held true for Lake, she would be in the lead over Gallego.
The latest results show Gallego ahead by 1.5 percent, 49.7 to 48.2 percent.
As of Friday morning, The New York Times reported that 77 percent of the votes are counted with hundreds of thousands yet to be tallied.